Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
unthinkable a few years earlier. It was even more extraordinary when one
recalled how during the Persian Gulf war, New Delhi retracted its permission for
American warplanes to refuel at Indian airfields just as soon as the public got
wind of such activities.
The contrast with past practices and patterns of Indo-American interaction could
not have been more stark. Moral indignation and mutual incomprehension, even
at times a sense of betrayal, have been the defining characteristics of relations
between India and the United States over the past half century. Historians
exploring this troubled relationship have written of
Estranged Democracies,
Comrades at Odds,
and
The Cold Peace
.
4
Although seemingly linked by
common values and a shared commitment to democratic pluralism, the two
countries frequently found more reason to quarrel than to collaborate. Even on
those relatively rare occasions when the two worked in tandem, bruised
sensibilities and bitter recriminations soon regained the upper hand in the
relationship.
The Clinton Legacy
Only in the mid-1990s did this depressing pattern begin to change. Over the
course of the decade, the end of the Cold War (and its confining bipolar world
view that led Americans to lump India in the Soviet camp), a new commitment to
economic reform in India, and the growing political clout of the Indian-American
community combined to shift American thinking about India and gave Indo-
American relations a new importance in Washington. By the time Bill Clinton
started his second presidential term, the administration had resolved to seek a
healthier US-India relationship.
In late 1997, Madeleine Albright became the first US secretary of state in
fourteen years to visit India. Planning for a presidential trip to India—the first
since Jimmy Carter visited in 1978—also got underway. These plans were
thwarted, however, first by political instability and a change of governments in
New Delhi, and then, more seriously, by India's decision to conduct five nuclear
tests in May 1998. The Indian detonations were followed by the imposition of
American military and economic sanctions, as required by US legislation
commonly known as the Glenn amendment.
5
Bilateral relations seemed headed
back into deep freeze.
Except that this did not happen. Though angered by the Indian tests and the
setback to US nonproliferation hopes they appeared to represent, the Clinton
administration opted to engage rather than isolate India. Over the following two
years, there ensued a remarkable series of high-level discussions between
Jaswant Singh and the US deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott. Not since the
early 1960s had the two countries engaged each other in such a serious and
sustained fashion. New Delhi in particular valued these meetings; according to
